


The Bottom Line

by TheSummoningDark



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 5 Things, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:43:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSummoningDark/pseuds/TheSummoningDark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Radek knows about Atlantis that Rodney doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bottom Line

He knows which shift every member of the science team is assigned to and what they are supposed to be doing. With Rodney so heavily preoccupied with whichever crisis is befalling them on any given day, or with his own personal research on the rare occasions the demands of the city and the gate are not greater, much of the day to day running of the science department falls to Radek. 

His position as the department's second in command has never been made official, but by now it is so ingrained it doesn't have to be. He arranges lab space and maintenance schedules and requisition forms, and due to all of the above requiring the head of department to sign off on them, could passably forge Rodney's signature by the end of their second month on Atlantis.

The rest of the scientists come to him with their problems. Much though it still occasionally irritates him to admit it, he serves a necessary purpose in acting as a buffer to ensure that mundane issues do not require the chief scientist's attention. Rodney needs to be free for more important things.

Of course Radek would die before telling him this.

 

 

 

He knows that, hidden at the back of Botany Lab 2 and cunningly disguised as part of the irrigation system, is a still. It was an open secret in that first year before they regained contact with Earth. Elizabeth had turned a blind eye so long as it didn't cause anyone to neglect their duties, and the only person any of them had made an active effort to conceal it from was Kavanagh. 

It was only after the aftermath of the siege had been cleared away and their senior command staff had gone to Earth to report that they suddenly realised that the regulations might actually have started to apply again. This was the point at which it became ostensibly part of Botany's irrigation system, the suggestion a stroke of genius from Parrish.

Rodney knows nothing of it. Largely because he has no interest whatsoever in the soft sciences and, to the best of Radek's knowledge, has never set foot in Botany Lab 2. 

 

 

 

He knows that Simpson used to play the violin; that Parrish has two younger brothers; that Miko did her first undergraduate at Oxford Brookes. That Peter Grodin had been a terrible liar under any other circumstances but somehow always managed to clean everyone out at poker, and Abrahms had tended to start humming the Beatles loudly when he forgot he wasn't alone in the lab. 

The rest of the department respect Rodney...even like him in some cases. But none of them - with the exception of himself - would call him a friend. His presence discourages idle chatter in the labs. Of course the lab is never _quiet_. Their most valuable discussions take place at the top of their lungs; the science department of Atlantis isn't a command structure so much as a surprisingly productive ongoing argument. But at times such as these the discussion is always all business.

When Rodney is occupied offworld or elsewhere in the city, however, casual conversation ranges over topics increasingly unrelated to their work. When he was younger he learned that when you are in the constant company of a small group of people under a great deal of stress, you either snap under the pressure or grow very, very close. Those who could not cope are long since gone. Those who survived are something like family.

Those who arrived from Earth with the Daedalus are welcome and appreciated, but there is a closeness between the original members of the expedition that they may never be a part of. He regrets it sometimes, knowing that they have fought and bled for Atlantis too, but regret will not change the facts. Hard as life is still, every time he remembers truly believing no help was coming and they were going to die here, he is thankful.

Dumais had left doodled cartoons on the edges of the whiteboards, designed to make them smile fleetingly even when things were at their worst, and been as quick as any of them to wipe the board clean when the space was needed. Gaul had known a truly astonishing number of dirty jokes and anecdotes, and while being paralysed with laughter had not helped productivity it had kept them from crying. The first time someone had unthinkingly cracked a joke after his death they had by unspoken agreement ignored the sobs mixed in the the snickers.

Sometimes he wonders if Rodney regrets not having known those they lost better.

 

 

 

He knows - in a way that he suspects the other man also knows deep down but will never allow himself to accept - that sometimes Rodney's brilliance can be as much a weakness as a strength. It makes him arrogant. And though it is to some extent justified, it causes him to be unable to handle failure, to recognise when a task is genuinely impossible. 

Sometimes, it causes him to overreach himself. And Rodney McKay does failure every bit as spectacularly as he does everything else.

Scientists, he supposes, are used to accepting that experimental conditions will never be ideal and trusting in their theories and calculations even when the vagaries of the equipment cause things to go awry. In a perfect world the theory and the experimental results would always match perfectly. But the world is far from perfect. 

Radek is an engineer; he has trained for his entire career to deal with the fact that he is fallible, that his equipment will never be perfect, that the materials he has to work with will never be flawless. It is pure instinct by now to calculate a safety factor into everything to allow for the inevitable problems. When theory and data disagree, he will accept that he cannot account for all variables and deal with what the data tells him regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

He will not criticise Rodney's blue-skies scientific thinking and careless dismissal of the impossible, not after how many times it has saved their lives. But he still remembers Doranda. When he thinks back to that day, what sticks out in his memory is not Rodney's scathing dismissal of his doubts (though for all they argued that was the first time Rodney had spoken to him with such contempt, and it _stung_ ), but the bleak despair as he realised there was no way he could possibly talk his friend out of that suicidal course.

He will always do it though. No matter how futile, no matter how much he may sometimes feel a brick wall would be more likely to listen to him, he will always be there to be the voice of caution. He is not the brilliant one - he accepts this. But brilliance without practicality is its own downfall. It is that combination of down to earth practicality and sheer transcendent genius which has saved them so many times.

It is not a glamorous role, the one he has taken on, but it is one that he is absolutely loyal to. He is wiser than to really believe it, but despite himself, he can't help but hope that Rodney knows this too.

 

 

 

He knows that Atlantis cannot survive without Rodney. For all the man's bluster and raging egotism, he does not think Rodney knows this. Not really. If he truly believed it he would not risk himself as he does.

Of course it is for the good of the city; perhaps it is better this way. But the truth of that, and what will come of it in the end, is something Radek doesn't know either.


End file.
